Does The GOP Really Give A Shit About The Debt?

[phantom power]

I can't decide if Sullivan just accidentally stumbled over a clue, or if he's still carrying water for Conservatives by pretending like any of them have ever cared about the deficit in the last 40 years, which is is obviously laughable to anybody paying attention.

It’s been a remarkable aspect of the foreign policy “debate” over the last month that I haven’t heard a single leading Republican express misgivings about a new Iraq war’s impact on fiscal policy. And yet, for a few years now, we have been subjected to endless drama about the mounting debt when it comes to anything the government wants to do. Cost was one (ludicrous) reason to oppose Obamacare; it’s behind cutting off 3 million long-term unemployed from any benefits; it has led to proposals to turn Medicare into a premium support system and for cutting social security. Some of this fiscal vigilance I find useful – if it weren’t so transparently a way to dodge GOP responsibility for the debt and to blame Obama for all of it and if it weren’t raised as a matter of urgency when the world economy was deeply depressed (the one time when fiscal lenience is warranted). But it is hard to resist the conclusion, after the last few weeks, that it’s all a self-serving charade.

I mean: where are the fiscal conservatives now? The ISIS campaign is utterly amorphous and open-ended at this point – exactly the kind of potentially crippling government program Republicans usually want to slash. It could last more than three years (and that’s what they’re saying at then outset); the cost is estimated by some to be around $15 billion a year, but no one really knows. The last phase of the same war cost, when all was said and done, something close to $1.5 trillion – and our current travails prove that this was one government program that clearly failed to achieve its core original objectives, and vastly exceeded its original projected costs.

If this were a massive $1.5 trillion infrastructure project for the homeland, we’d be having hearing after hearing on how ineffective and crony-ridden it is; there would be government reports on its cost-benefit balance; there would be calls to end it tout court. But a massive government program that can be seen as a form of welfare dependency for the actual countries – Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Kurdistan – facing the crisis gets almost no scrutiny at all. And what scrutiny it gets is entirely due to partisanship and the desire to portray this president as effectively useless.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/09/22/does-the-gop-really-give-a-shit-about-the-debt/

[spanone]

1. it was a non-factor during the bu$h fiasco

[Autumn]

2. No they don't give a shit about the debt.

They just want cuts and tax breaks for their donors.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Why should they care?

The debt is mostly owned by their international employers, including China.

[Throd]

4. Not the Boehner wing.

[JaneyVee]

5. They give a shit about creating much more of it.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Not really, they only use the debt as a political wedge issue and not a matter of

sound fiscal policy.


Thanks for the thread, phantom power.

[Dawson Leery]

7. Moderate Gerald Ford was the last Republican President to

veto a budget over concerns of debt. Since St. Ronald came along, the GOP's mantra about fiscal conservatism means not giving tax dollars to the "others" in society (minorities).

[MFrohike]

8. Who cares?

It's all denominated in dollars and isn't redeemable for another currency or commodity. It's all smoke and no fire.

[Fred Sanders]

9. The sacred cow of America is war. War is special.

Waging war is the price America pays to keep the world reserve currency, so technically American dollar debt does not matter, America just prints more, and though waging global wide war is expensive it is funded with unlimited paper money accepted around the globe.

[truebluegreen]

10. "No."

Never did.

[Eleanors38]

11. The expert on what politically matters has said "no:"

Dick Cheney.

[Taitertots]

12. "So we don’t have a debt crisis, and never did." Paul Krugman

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/opinion/Paul-Krugman-An-Imaginary-Budget-and-Debt-Crisis.html?_r=0

Republicans care about the debt/deficit only as deeply as one needs to care to bemoan Obama about it.